"At the height of the grungerevolution, we were strumming on our old banjos and singing about macaroni. It felt like we were the ones being daring."

—Barenaked Ladies, on their song "Alternative Girlfriend"

Barenaked Ladies, frequently abbreviated BnL, are a Canadian alternative rock band formed in 1988. They got their name when founding members Ed Robertson and Steven Page were discussing names for a band during a Bob Dylan concert; when they went to sign up for a music competition shortly thereafter, and realised they needed to come up with a band name on the spot, they panicked and the rest is history.

Although their first hit song was a dynamite cover of Bruce Cockburn's "Lovers in a Dangerous Time," they soon began making considerable waves with their own creations with a cheap independently produced demo tape, called The Yellow Tape, that was rejected by all the music labels. With nothing else to do with it, the band started selling copies at their concerts and it caught on like wildfire until it hit national Platinum sales status (100,000), the first ever indie label to do so in Canada. They're mostly known for sometimes intelligently snarky, sometimes just plain goofy lyrics, a tendency to improvise, and a light-hearted stage show combining all of the above.

Once banned by the mayor from playing at a New Year's venue in their native Toronto due to their "obscene" name, they were later given the key to the city. There's a message in there somewhere.

The line-up has changed twice, with Andy Creeggan leaving prior to the release of Born On a Pirate Ship and Steven Page leaving the group for a solo career in 2009. The current band consists of:

Ed Robertson: Guitar/Vocals

Kevin Hearn: Keyboard/Vocals/Guitar/Other

Tyler Stewart: Drums

Jim Creeggan: Bass/Vocals

Studio Discography:

Gordon (1992)

Maybe You Should Drive (1994)

Born On a Pirate Ship (1996)

Stunt (1998, first album with Kevin Hearn, also the album that has "One Week" on it)

Maroon (2000)

Everything to Everyone (2003)

Barenaked for the Holidays (2004, holiday album, in that it has songs about Hanukkah as well as Christmas)

For a while they didn't perform the song because they were tired of getting hit with boxes (on the live version, you can hear them complain about it after the line). These days, any boxes that do get thrown are donated to food pantries.

They also have donation boxes at their concerts with signs requesting that your Kraft dinners go there instead of the stage.

Similarly, people sometimes throw underwear on stage during "Pinch Me". Yes, for *that* lyric. See Heh Heh, You Said X below.

Which makes one wonder whether the line "Throw your mobile phone" in "Wind It Up" is a Shout-Out or simply Tempting Fate.

Bad Santa: His elves have a few grievances to discuss in "Elf's Lament"

Bait and Switch: Their cover of "Jingle Bells," which begins as a sombre piano ballad before unexpectedly bursting into the much more uptempo version we all know, only getting more and more ridiculous as it goes along.

Boggles the Mind: In "Conventioneers", two co-workers hanging out in the same hotel room are playing Scrabble. One plays the word "LOVE". Despite their best attempts to awkwardly laugh it off, Coitus Ensues.

Brick Joke: "I'd buy you a fur coat but not a real fur coat, that's cruel." In the next verse, they sing "I'd buy you a green dress, but not a real green dress, that's cruel."

A possibly unintentional one: Track 9 on Barenaked Ladies Are Me is called "Maybe You're Right". Track 9 on the follow-up album Barenaked Ladies Are Men is called "Maybe Not".

Captain Obvious: "If I had $1000000...I'd be rich." Despite the obvious Canadian currency jokes in the 90s, one million in Canadian was still worth a lot. Nowadays it's almost exactly as much as a million American dollars, and often more than that in the years since the 2009 recession.

"Leave your heart Lay down your art, you're here for the party Smile and wave, try to behave Be happy that they've made you a celebrity"

Cerebus Syndrome: Before Maroon, the main BnL studio albums predominantly consisted of comical (or at least tongue-in-cheek) songs with one or two serious tracks thrown in for good measure. From Maroon onward, the amount of down-tempo Serious Business in each album has increased.

Christmas Songs: The album "Barenaked For the Holidays", with both original and familiar Christmas songs, as well as a couple of Hanukkah songs.

Conversational Troping: "Box Set" seems to discuss just about every music trope that an aging musician past his prime will inevitably run into.

"It's All Been Done" is basically a song about romantic clichés.

Corpsing: Steven Page can be heard trying in vain not to lose it on both "The King of Bedside Manner" and their incredibly ridiculous cover of "Jingle Bells."

Executive Meddling:invoked Discussed in "Box Set": "Disc Two, it was all brand new, an album's worth of songs/But we had to leave the whole disc blank 'cause some other label bought 'em."

Getting Crap Past the Radar: Born On A Pirate Ship is named after a childhood attempt at this; try saying the album name while sticking your tongue out and pinching it.

The song "Go Home" has the line "And if you think of her as Catherine the Great, then you should be the horse that helps her meet her fate". note referring to the oft-repeated legend that she was killed attempting to make love to a horse.

Hand or Object Underwear: On the cover of their live album for the Au Naturale tour, all five then-members of the band are fully naked and use their hands in this manner, in combination with Speech-Bubble Censoring (technically, it's the album title). On the poster that advertised the tour itself, the "object" covering BNL's nudity was co-headliner Alanis Morissette, who was also naked herself and using hand underwear.

Heh Heh, You Said X: "Pinch Me": "I could hide out under there/I just made you say underwear." This usually causes audiences to throw underwear. Ed tends to lampshade the audience's reaction by changing the line to "I just made you throw underwear."

Imagine Everyone Naked: Early in their career, when the band had trouble finishing a song for Gordon ("The King of Bedside Manor"), someone suggested that the band should try this – only without the "imagine" part. The resultant "over-the-top nervous energy" of the recording, as producer Michael Phillip Wojewoda described it, inspired the band to do this for one song per album until 2003.

Improv: It's not uncommon during concerts to see them making up songs on the spot, or humorous interjections when the band is shooting the breeze on stage.

Intercourse with You: A few rare depressing examples including "In the Car" (a song about two people having sex despite no emotional connection) and "Conventioneers" (about a man sleeping with a co-worker and regretting it afterward).

Then there's "In The Drink".

"Back and forth like a choo-choo train."

Ironic Echo / Meaningful Echo: The line "You're the last thing on my mind" in the song "Tonight Is The Night I Fell Asleep At The Wheel" goes from meaning "I'm not thinking about you" to something completely different by the end of the song.

The titular line, 'It's all been done,' may be this as well, with the final repetitions of the phrase being literal if the subjects of the song are reminiscing at the end of time.

The titular line to "Half a Heart" goes from "even someone who barely cares would help me" to "even someone who doesn't care would hurt me" in each chorus.

It Is Pronounced Tro PAY: Their live album Rock Spectacle is pronounced "Rock Spec-tac". The "le" is silent. note Part of the album was recorded in Montreal, so they use the French pronunciation as a nod.

Inverted with "We're dans le maison" in "One Week." They pronounce it "Don luh Mays-on," and in at least one interview tried to pretend "Don Lemazon" was the manager for Lynyrd Skynyrd. It's actually French for "in the house."

Lyrical Cold Open: "I Know", "Break Your Heart", "Have You Seen My Love?", "One and Only", "Jerome", "The Love We're In", "Enid", several tracks on Snacktime!, and most famously, "One Week" and the theme song to The Big Bang Theory.

"In the Drink". An easy-going, jazzy little song in which Jim Creeggan declares, "I want to drink your blood".

The king of this must be "I'll Be That Girl", a rather bouncy song about pining over an overly self-absorbed person, and what he'd do if he were her.

"I'll be that girl and you would be right over And if I were a field, you would be in clover And if I were the sun. you would be in shadow And If I had a gun, there'd be no tomorrow"

"Alcohol" is an upbeat little ditty about alcohol. It's also an upbeat little ditty about alcoholism.

"Fun and Games" fits the bill, considering it's a happy little ditty that includes the line "We knew your sons and daughters would be blown in half."

Male Frontal Nudity: While not seen by the public, there was formerly plenty of this in the studio. From 1992 until 2003, the band had a tradition to record one song per album completely naked, a rule that applied to anyone else in the studio as well. See if you can listen to the following "naked tracks" in the same way knowing how they were recorded:

Everything to Everyone: "Sign Me Up" (left off the final album, and remains unreleased; described by the band as "basically us swearing our heads off for six minutes")

In interviews for Barenaked Ladies Are Me, the band confirmed they had abandoned the tradition, saying it had gotten old. However, the first album to not include a naked track was, perhaps ironically, 2004's Barenaked for the Holidays.

"Pinch Me", "Another Postcard", "The History of Everything", and "Four Seconds" also qualify. "Testing 1, 2, 3" even lampshades this, possibly expressing some frustration at the fact that their songs without "a bunch of really fast rhymes" don't seem to get as much attention.

Non-Appearing Title: They completely averted the Album Title Drop up until Snacktime. All in Good Time still manages to avert it because the title track was ultimately left off of the album.

Their best-of collection, Disc One: All Their Greatest Hits, notably lacks "Box Set", the very song that inspired its title.

Although on each of their albums from Gordon (1992; their first major label release) to Everything to Everyone (2003), they did record one song per album completely naked. (On a couple of occasions, however, the "naked track" ended up coincidentally being left off the final album.) The concept was abandoned while recording 2006's Barenaked Ladies Are Me; the band said it had gotten old.

Gotta get in tune with Sailor Moon, 'cause that cartoon has got the boom anime babes, That make me think the wrong thing.

Power of Love: According to 'Odds Are', you have a much better chance of falling in love by the time the track ends, than you would die in a multitude of horrible ways... Which the bulk of the song, sans-chorus, spends detailing.

On Gordon, Both Creeggan brothers share the lead with Page on "I Love You".

On Maybe You Should Drive, Andy sings lead on "Little Tiny Song".

On Born on a Pirate Ship, Jim sings lead on "Spider in My Room" and "In the Drink".

On Maroon, Kevin sings lead on the Hidden Track "Hidden Sun", which is about his recovery from leukemia.

On Barenaked Ladies Are Me, Jim sings lead on "Peterborough and the Kawarthas", and Kevin on "Vanishing".

On Barenaked Ladies Are Men, Kevin sings lead on "Serendipity" and "Another Spin".

Barenaked For the Holidays and Snacktime! both had a number of songs not led by Ed or Steven. Drummer Tyler Stewart even briefly steps up to the mic on these albums.

On All in Good Time, their first album after Page's departure, Kevin sings lead on "Another Heartbreak", "Jerome", and "Watching the Northern Lights", while Jim takes the mic on "On the Lookout" and "I Saw It".

On Grinning Streak, Kevin sings lead on "Daydreamin'".

Tyler has also assumed lead vocals in live performances of at least one of Page's former songs ("Alcohol"), as has Kevin ("Sound of Your Voice", which Kevin wrote but Steven sang until he left).

Stranger in a Familiar Land: "The Old Apartment". A guy breaks into an apartment where he and his girl used to live, because he wants some of his old stuff back. In the process, he revisits some old memories and realizes life isn't quite the same now that they've moved away.

Take That: The track "Shopping" from "Everything for Everyone" seems to have been inspired by Bush's reaction to 9/11.

"Fun and Games" from "Barenaked Ladies are Men" is a fairly explicit condemnation of the War on Terror.

Also "Maybe You're Right", "Take It Back", and "Rule the World with Love" off "Barenaked Ladies are Me"

Not to mention "Next Time", "Second Best" and especially "Shopping" off Everything To Everyone, all direct Take That's at George W. Bush.

The opening track on Gordon, "Hello City", is a Take That to Halifax, Nova Scotia, which according to commenters on SongMeanings gave the band a raucous and rude reception when they played there before becoming famous.

At least two of the tracks on All In Good Time deal with Ed's frustration with Steve's departure; in an interview, he said that the group owed it to their fans to produce good music because they effing care.

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